Primary Commodities Report for September 29th - October 3rd

By: Gabriella Acevedo, The Quinnipiac University Global Economics Research Team

Commodities Index

Source: Yahoo Finance and own calculations. Rates are in United States dollars per one (1) unit of goods. Brent Crude Oil is measured in barrels. Natural Gas is measured in MMBtu (Million British Thermal Units), Gold is per troy ounce, and for Nickel the price reflects price per share of (NIKL) ETF. They are all indexed to be at 100 at the start of the period.

During the week of September 29 – October 3 Natural Gas (Green) appears to be the biggest mover. Natural gas gradually increased throughout the 29^th to the 2^nd where it then stood at 21.4% above the baseline. The prices then began to decrease ending the period at  ~ 17.2% above the baseline. Brent Oil (black) was the other commodity showing the biggest movement. It declined through the week ending to ~ 7.8% below the baseline. Nickel (Red) and Gold (Yellow) showed a similar pattern of increases through the week ending at ~4.9% and ~ 2.7% above the baseline.

Commodities Historical Trends

Source: Yahoo Finance and own calculations. Rates are in United States dollars per one (1) unit of goods. Brent Crude Oil is measured in barrels. Natural Gas is measured in MMBtu (Million British Thermal Units), Gold is per troy ounce, and for Nickel the price reflects price per share of (NIKL) ETF. The center line is a rolling three-month average. The upper and lower boundaries are the average plus and average minus one standard deviation, respectively, for the same three-month period.

As we hit the beginning of October Brent Oil (Black) shows the largest fluctuations. Going from a price of $71.70/barrel at the start of August to $64.30/barrel and broke the lower bound at end of this week. Natural Gas (Green) also showed significant movement going from a price of $2.8/MMBtu at the end of September to a price of $3.4/MMBtu at the end of this week.  Gold (Yellow) hit a lower bound of $3330.20/troy oz. during the month of August, however, has been steadily increasing and surpassed the upper bound with a high of $3855.20/troy oz. at the end of this week. Lastly Nickel (Red) rose above the upper bound ending this week at $15.34/share.

Additional Reading

Trumps economic plans called for more oil drilling and lower gas prices he is only getting the latter

President Trump had a plan of drilling more oil and have lower gas prices once he was in office. However, this is easier said than done. Gas prices are lower, but the drilling seems to be on hold. The oil industry is slowing due to prices falling. It is harder to drill because the price of drilling cannot be justified. Trump's Administration has an optimistic approach on this stating that the “Big Beautiful Bill” should help to alleviate this problem. Along with OPEC stating that they will begin having their member countries boosting production by 137,000 barrels a day starting in October. There may be an increase in prices by the start of 2026 if this plan goes accordingly.